Phillip Morris is suing yessmoke.com, a swiss-based bonded warehouse which sells cigarettes online. Yessmoke sells european and american cigarettes
on the internet, and apparently Phillip Morris does not want EU manufactured cigarettes sold in the US, despite the fact that EU cigarettes of the
same brand (eg, Marlboros) are made with 30% less nitrosamines, a carcinogenic tobacco additive.
The story is long and basically involves the usual strong-arm tactics employed by a big fish against a small one. BUT check this out- apparently
Phillip Morris sent in one of their usual shipments to Yessmoke three cartons of cigarettes, hidden at random, containing not cigarettes, but circutry
designed to look like a bomb. It seems that PM was hoping these cartons would find their way into one of Yessmoke's american shipments, setting off
a customs alert and thus making customs more vigiliant against Yessmoke packages crossing US borders.
The Device
Were they transmitters disguised as fake bombs, or fake bombs disguised as transmitters, those three strange devices found in August in 3 cartons
of PM production destined to Yesmoke? The police returned them to Yesmoke: they are not transmitters, they are not bombs. Yesmoke, to be absolutely
sure, had them analysed. A collection of radio parts and wires. The only thing that seemed certain, by direct admission, was that they came from PM,
that is, the devices were PM property.
The full story can be found on yessmoke's site:
www.yessmoke.com...
If this is true, PM deliberately chose to waste US taxpayer's resources and cynically use the "war on terror" for it's own petty corporate
warfare. Truly a new low. Or maybe not... can't wait to see what the courts find.
-koji K.
[edit on 2-7-2004 by koji_K]
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